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| Airborne Ariel leads Royal Shakespeare Company into age of CGI | |
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| The head of the Royal Shakespeare Company may be better versed in the language of Elizabethan theatre than digital technology, but a chance viewing of a corporate video featuring an extraordinary flying whale has inspired him to bring CGI technology to Stratford for the first time. | The head of the Royal Shakespeare Company may be better versed in the language of Elizabethan theatre than digital technology, but a chance viewing of a corporate video featuring an extraordinary flying whale has inspired him to bring CGI technology to Stratford for the first time. |
| Gregory Doran, the RSC’s artistic director, told the Guardian he had the idea to feature digital characters live on stage during a new version of The Tempest after being awed by the sight of a 3D Leviathan whale swimming over hundreds of people in an auditorium. After seeing it, Doran told colleagues: “That’s what I want for The Tempest.” | Gregory Doran, the RSC’s artistic director, told the Guardian he had the idea to feature digital characters live on stage during a new version of The Tempest after being awed by the sight of a 3D Leviathan whale swimming over hundreds of people in an auditorium. After seeing it, Doran told colleagues: “That’s what I want for The Tempest.” |
| As rehearsals for the tale of Prospero’s storm got under way this week, Doran said it was storytelling for the 21st century, taking the audience’s imagination into new realms. “We would be luddites not to open ourselves to those possibilities,” he told the Guardian. | |
| “I’m amazed just how fast technology advances. There’s even been, since we started this venture [a year ago], a new kind of glass that’s been invented that you can’t see. So there are all sorts of things that you can project on to.” | “I’m amazed just how fast technology advances. There’s even been, since we started this venture [a year ago], a new kind of glass that’s been invented that you can’t see. So there are all sorts of things that you can project on to.” |
| The production stars Simon Russell Beale as Prospero the magician, and Mark Quartley as Ariel the sprite, who will be transformed through real-time performance capture technology into a “live” animated character. “You will see an avatar of Ariel in real time, flying, walking and moving in the middle space, in the air” during the performance when the play begins in November, said Doran. | |
| With technology provided by Intel and The Imaginarium Studios, the hope is that, when Prospero conjures up a magical storm to wreck the ship carrying men who wronged him, projected images on multiple surfaces will also make the audience feel as though they are in the ship as it starts filling with water. Actors will appear to be thrown into the air by crashing, swirling waves. | With technology provided by Intel and The Imaginarium Studios, the hope is that, when Prospero conjures up a magical storm to wreck the ship carrying men who wronged him, projected images on multiple surfaces will also make the audience feel as though they are in the ship as it starts filling with water. Actors will appear to be thrown into the air by crashing, swirling waves. |
| Quartley will wear sensors that capture his movements, projecting them into the air and rendering him as a character that morphs in and out of a human form. | Quartley will wear sensors that capture his movements, projecting them into the air and rendering him as a character that morphs in and out of a human form. |
| Sarah Ellis, the RSC’s head of digital development, said: “To be able to create digital characters in real time on that scale in a theatrical environment is a huge achievement.” | Sarah Ellis, the RSC’s head of digital development, said: “To be able to create digital characters in real time on that scale in a theatrical environment is a huge achievement.” |
| Doran was inspired by his research into 17th-century masques. “I realised how astonishingly innovative they were in their day. I thought: what is there now in the 21st century that’s cutting-edge?” He believes that new technology can help to reach new audiences. One man told him: “My son hates Shakespeare, but he’d love to come to that.” | |
| Tawny Schlieski, Intel’s director of research, said the potential for live theatre was huge: “It’s not about being new for new’s sake. It’s about creating that moment in which you’re immersed in a world and you don’t think about why or how. You just become lost in it. That’s something magical.” | Tawny Schlieski, Intel’s director of research, said the potential for live theatre was huge: “It’s not about being new for new’s sake. It’s about creating that moment in which you’re immersed in a world and you don’t think about why or how. You just become lost in it. That’s something magical.” |
| The RSC’s 2017 spring/summer season will also feature a Rome season, comprising Shakespeare’s four great political thrillers: Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, Titus Andronicus and Coriolanus. | |
| There will also be a co-production with Hull Truck Theatre of The Hypocrite by the award-winning playwright Richard Bean, described by the RSC as a “riotous farce about the infamous moment in Hull’s history which started the English civil war”, and a staging of Guan Hanqing’s Snow in Midsummer, a story of social injustice from 13th Yuan dynasty China that tells the story of a young girl framed for a crime she did not commit. It is part of a cultural exchange with China. The Shanghai Dramatic Arts Centre will in turn produce Henry V with a Chinese cast under the RSC’s associate director, Owen Horsley. |